Firstly I am sure you are asking what is an “ICO Crowdsale”. I was asking the same thing a few months ago before I knew about this crazy new disruptive space that is Crytopcurrencies. I certainly knew of bitcoin and the crazy ride it has had but I never really took some time to understand it until I watched this documentary "Bitcoin: The End of Money As We Know It" - very inspirational (and scary).
After finding bitcoin and then shortly after Etherum, I discovered the world of Altcoins (alternative crypto coins to Bitcoin). When they are released they often do an “ICO” Initial Coin Offering where you invest in the development of the coin similar to how you would invest in a business during an IPO.
While watching over a few of these happening the ICONOMI Fund Management Platform really spoke out at me. Brilliant business models to me often involve clipping the ticket (e.g taking a commission) of a transaction that can be automated via platform. One of the reasons I work for ROKT a transaction marketing company. Not to mention the fact that I am also ultra passionate about cryptocurrency at the moment.
Iconomi is a European Ether exchange run by Cashila which was a proof of concept showing what the team can deliver. Exactly what you want to see when investing in a Initial Coin Offering (ICO). They are putting this together in order to fund their decentralized open fund management (OFM) platform that aims to make cryptocurrency investment easy and accessible to people from around the world.

The crises of our time, it becomes increasingly clear, are the necessary impetus for the revolution now under way. And once we understand nature's transformative powers, we see that it is our powerful ally, not a force to feared our subdued. - Thomas Kuhn

I can only do so much to explain the platform the best thing to do is get over to the website ico.iconomi.net and read the two whitepapers on what they plan on doing, here is an abstract that really got me excited about the platform.

WHY INVEST IN ICONOMI? ICONOMI is about disruption - the “uberisation” of fund management. We are pairing the business-model fundamentals of the crypto-world and the obvious trend of platform domination with new technological possibilities. Internet, Facebook, Android, Uber - those are all the big stories where it was impossible to invest at the early stages of development. It was either technically not possible (for example with the Internet) or it was only reserved for “big investors”, who in turn reaped all the high profits.
We believe that blockchains are game-changers for the investment world, linking those with disruptive ideas directly to those looking for investing opportunities, no matter the skill level or size of investment. Now it is possible to invest in disruptive technologies at the very early stages.
ICONOMI’s mission is to attract investors looking for high profits, not possible in the old economy. It will do so through a simple and trustworthy entry point, providing them with excellent experience, which is crucial for keeping them investing in the new economy. With your help, ICONOMI will bring an influx of fresh capital into the distributed economy, providing funding for exciting new projects and boosting the value of digital assets along the way.

If that doesn't give you enough to get excited about the platform - just look at the returns based on simulated performance of a CTF, based on the realised prices of 9 cryptocurrencies in the first half of 2016. Yes.. that is a 4x return on investment, not your average 8-25% return from the stock market. IT'S A 400% RETURN. People would be crazy not to invest in a platform that creates these sort of returns.
At the time of publishing they have raised over $4.4 Million USD and it was very promising to see the team very conservatively using capital while on the road building presence for the brand at the Pirate Summit in Germany.

[PLEASE TAKE THE FOLLOWING WITH A GRAIN OF SALT - I am not a financial planner, and this is not financial advice] If you need more of a reason to invest in this business, my extremely rough back of the envelope estimate. Being able to clip the ticket of millions upon millions worth of investments the revenue potential is huge. Looking at the "average mutual fund fee" google tells me it is 1.25% fee. If they can just get to 10% of size of the #1 mutual fund in the US that is $26 billion (Source: Forbes). That is a $32.5 million dollar revenue return per year. The ceiling for the ICO is $21 million dollar maximum investment, if 70% of that revenue would be go back to users and lets assume 50% of profit goes to operational costs, that is $11.375 million per year return from the initial investment of $21 million (ICO funding ceiling limit) per year!. Obviously we wont see this in the first year, but if we can see this in 5-10 years its an incredible investment to make now!

— Stewart Barrett (@stewface) March 15, 2016
New York Times -
Creating cut through with compelling content -
The art of story telling through "brand studio" stories that influence the influential
Native advertising lets you reach unique niche audiences - get placed within topical pieces
Let brand give something back to their audience.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">

Foxtel / tubemogul
Must be a better way to commuiuncate with customers - set a vision 3 years prior and key partners to help us make it to our goal.
Foxtel - wanted to understand how they buY their digital media - better way to do this to reach our customers and prospects more effectively.
$150k to $50 per week in display spend with an increase in conversions

Foxtel - Taking control of the data
What model do you use?
If you had your time again would you do things differently -
Take all stakeholders along with the journey, Make sure to bring the IT department with you slow uptake in that department.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">

The agile enterprise - decisions made in near real time.
Data is silo'd
You might get information all feeding into the one channel so you can make quick decisions
You need to see all your data transformed into one wholistic dashboard -
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">

What does ad format do for my brand
What are people doing dropping consideration,
Is native performing better (or costing more)
When should you put in the frequency caps
Nivea were tailoring ads to digital / online for video
What is the impact of tailoring that to the medium.

Jean Thomas - Vino Mofo
Brands that use data to drive insights -
Buzz products created a fridge for budlight - data and replenishment - realtime data in your time.
US market 70% consumption in home, most marketing dollars spent for venues
Product shows how beverages inside the fridge
Marketing opportunities to understand when some people are running low on drinks in the fridge and send a coupon
Created relationships with beer delivery services
Hundreds of thousand of products in the home.
What can be done to push the marketing envelope
What temperature do people like to drink there beer at
Understand how people are using your product in realtime
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">

Users are searching less and discovering more.
Narcos - Wouldn't search for because you didn't know it existed.
Users are spending much less time searching
Amazing experiences are what power us
Story works - BBC decision about content, sport and innovation

Marketing companies spending more on analytics
Price promo motions drive short term increase in sales
No ROI on TV / Print.
Correlate purchase intention in base sales
Move 1% of the "makes your skin soft" term which will give a dollar value from sales.

More about me...

Stewart is an agile, results oriented data driven digital strategist with over 15 years’ experience designing, building, and marketing web and mobile platforms.
Stewart has a passion for businesses that challenge and disrupt markets. He gets particularly excited working with big data, solving critical strategic problems and rolling out creative solutions to ensure changes are smoothly implemented. Stewart loves finding a way to make things better.

Portfolio

Tomorro

Tomorro is a global promotion aggregation site where people are encouraged to dream generously and give back to the community... Read More on this Project...

SHESAID

SHESAID was Australia’s first premier female fashion site launching back in 1999. Stewart lead a team to completely redeveloped the site with a new premium branding and undertake a full marketing strategy to relaunch... Read More on this Project...